"His name was Ash Robinson. And though its very sound held flair, conjured visions of romantic novels, his life for seven decades had not been one that veered from the ruts of the ordinary road... "This is not to mean that Ash courted, as some men do, the anonymity of shadowed places, or that he had accomodated himself to a place in the crowd, as most men eventually do. Because he had believed, from the earliest years of his memory, that Ash Robinson was special, that he possessed the talent and breeding and drive to climb somehow up the summit and once there claim a place in history. But though his life for seventy years had been an interesting and occasionally vivid one, there was nothing notable enough to set it aside for other men to mark and examine."
"His name was Ash Robinson. And though its very sound held flair, conjured visions of romantic novels, his life for seven decades had not been one that veered from the ruts of the ordinary road... "This is not to mean that Ash courted, as some men do, the anonymity of shadowed places, or that he had accomodated himself to a place in the crowd, as most men eventually do. Because he had believed, from the earliest years of his memory, that Ash Robinson was special, that he possessed the talent and breeding and drive to climb somehow up the summit and once there claim a place in history. But though his life for seventy years had been an interesting and occasionally vivid one, there was nothing notable enough to set it aside for other men to mark and examine."